Gifted: the monolingualism of corporate social responsibility

Abstract

Acts of Corporate Social Responsibility are more often than not portrayed as success-story narratives. A quasi-ethnographic study in Senegal shatters the underlying assumptions of these accounts. First a computer donation from a Northern country is described with all the usual incidents and related vocabulary. Later, during a visit to a Senegalese rubbish dump, the story starts to falter, as countless questions arise about what is actually going on there, and how we can know and represent it (both as a portrayal and as a voice). A tipping point in an interview serves to reveal the ambiguities of the position adopted and the difficulties of expressing oneself in a different language. The CSR language is described as a kind of monolingualism, which employs a particular vocabulary and grammar for what is said or thought. This is the monolingualism of the other. Some of the implications of this monolingualism are examined, and this leads to the conclusion that there is a need to take measures with regard to the CSR language and that more than one language is needed to speak about CSR.

Contested Discursive Framing of a Bank’s Cooptative Joint CSR Model

“…Within the undertheorized body of critical CSR ethnographies (Demuijnck 2009;Moriceau and Guerillot 2012;Costas and Kärreman 2013), there is a dearth of research on the semiotic discursive features of CSR framing.…”

The Ethnographic Method in CSR Research: The Role and Importance of Methodological Fit

“…As noted in Table 1, few ethnographic CSR studies utilize the transformative position to inform the research question. An exception is Moriceau and Guerillot (2012), in their study of donations and CSR, who ask "whether a donation can be accounted for outside the frames and language of CSR" (p. 154). Their transformative position enables them to criticize a monolonguistic approach to CSR, offering that more than one "language of CSR" is needed to fully understand that it does not always describe "successes."…”

“…Critical ethnography provides, we argue, the most potential for advancing CSR research by challenging our established understanding of (a) what CSR means, (b) the experiences of individuals as they engage in CSR practices, and (c) the positive (and negative) outcomes of CSR, among other facets of CSR research. For example, Moriceau and Guerillot (2012), in criticizing a monolonguistic approach to CSR, challenge the idea that CSR always creates positive outcomes and offer that there are other outcomes (negative or otherwise) that stem from CSR. Taking this research one step forward might result in some solutions to the negative outcomes of CSR, or investigating how CSR language can be altered so that negative outcomes are reduced.…”